Week 10, term 1 (!)

In spite of wishing I could just snuggle down into bed, I got a very contented feeling this morning from how productive I'd been. Usually, the morning of a day with a large to do list consists of me getting up anything from half an hour to six hours later than the intended time (depends if I'm on holiday or not, and if I have to be anywhere), and feeling bad about not having got cracking on the list, and maybe tackling one item. Today, feeling temporarily energised after a shower, I:

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  went down to Liverpool St station to Smith's to get some glue
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  came back and used said glue to attach the coloured letters to the noticeboard banner
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  got the key for the noticeboard from reception, and put the banner inside the noticeboard, and replaced the blutack on SC2's Tip of the Week poster with drawing pins as she'd asked me to

This all before breakfast

• 
  Went back to reception, found that the manager wasn't in yet but the deputy manager had the authority to help me:
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  Got approval for having a re-use box in the common room (and the possibility that the deputy manager might have a spare box lying around, which would save going to Tesco's)
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  Got approval for a poster reminding people to switch everything off before going home for the holidays and clear out their fridges, as well as promoting the re-use box
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  Asked whether it would be possible to have weekly meter readings next term to keep residents informed of how they're doing with energy saving
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  Made a label for the re-use box & printed it out
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  Printed out some copies of the poster
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  Handed same over in reception (1 copy for reference, 1 for the notice board by the mail boxes; label in case the deputy manager does have a box)
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  Got key again to put third copy of poster on noticeboard.

All this before 9.45.

However, that was the most energetic it got all day. I fell asleep on the bus on the way in (admittedly I did make a conscious decision to close my eyes). Then it was time to meet up to work on the group presentation. To begin with it was just me and K. We found a mostly empty computer room and after a bit more work on our respective slides I practised giving my part of the presentation. It was very hard to get started- to begin with I had no idea what to say with the slides, but when I plunged in it came naturally.

However, my slides weren't really proper slides- they were pages of a LaTeX document. There are ways to make slides using LaTeX, and I did go on to use these. But after a lot of work, it all turned out to be useless, because you have to use postscript files (actually, eps ones) in that case, and I couldn't get my files from postscript to eps. So I had to have them as pngs instead, and use pdflatex as I did for the write-up. But this meant the slides came out as pages of an ordinary document and it wasn't ideal. Still, I used them to practice with the others. We started out with a running time of 20 minutes, of which my main part was more than 7 (I'm doing two sections). As we're only allowed 15 minutes strictly enforced, th:is was a problem. We tried again a few times; M and C were already pretty well down as far as they could go with times of 2:50 or so each, but K and I managed to shave quite a bit off- he halved his time by not going into the details of the situation as outlined in the question (it's not necessary as everyone in the room will know it by heart already), and I did some slides in less detail and talked very fast and got it down to 4 minutes. This meant that we were now under the 15 minute time- let's hope we can do it tomorrow too!

I'm actually not feeling that nervous about tomorrow. I did feel a bit awkward at first when we all practised together, because there were people in the computer room just getting on with work, and I was presenting loudly. But by the end I was fairly confident. And, though it's not a great thing to do, I derive comfort from knowing that I can take refuge in the computer screen in the desk which will also be showing my slides as well as the data projector. Today I was mostly just looking at that, and sometimes going over and gesturing at the projection and looking at that, but tomorrow the aim is to look at the audience- still at least I have the option of hunching over the screen.

Everyone else's presentations looked so good in Powerpoint that I decided I'd better do mine like that too, even though I think it's naff, and I don't like using the Microsoft Equation way of mathematical typsetting, because I'm a LaTeX snob (yes, they can pretty much do the same things, but LaTeX looks nicer (except in this case- it was the failure to achieve proper slides that was the prob, and it was my fault not its), doesn't involve fiddling around from window to window (just once at the end) or sizing things with the mouse, and is all done from the keyboard. True, Equation is more user friendly, but after you've put in some time getting to learn the commands LaTeX is really just as easy). So I spent three hours making a new set of slides- and Equationing over and over. I ended up pretty zonked out. It didn't feel real- more like a dream or being drunk or something. And I didn't have the usual subliminal awareness of where I was (in this case LSE), but felt like I and the screen were the only two things in the world. Tempting as it is to blame Equation, I suspect it has more to do with the all nighter and not having had any lunch.

I was hoping to finish the slides by 6.30 when the active People and Planet people (ie the ones that come to committee meetings) were meeting for an end of term meal. Actually I didn't get through it all till 6.45, but the email had said it would also be possible to turn up to the restaurant (Cubana near Waterloo) so that's what I did. It was a good evening. The food sounded rather tasteless on the menu but was actually great and the cocktails were amazing. Oh, and of course there was the company. I was still rather exhausted so was probably not the life and soul- and I was sitting next to the President, whom I like but whom I don't think I interact very well with conversationally- somehow I always have an irresistable compulsion to say boring things/ tell boring personal anecdotes when in her company. I can see the risk of them being boring before I open my mouth, but somehow in my brain they always sound relevant and interesting. I suppose it's possible that it might not be my boringness but her inability to respond in a positive interested way? That sounds better, let's go with that! :-)

The conversation turned to what people were going to wear to the President's party on Wednesday (theme 'So you think you're trendy?'). I tried to avoid eye contact, and saying anything, as I hadn't been invited, and this was the first I'd heard of it- I didn't expect to be invited, of course (the people talking were pretty close friends of hers), but I didn't want anyone to think that I thought I should have been and feel awkward. But then she told me that she'd forgotten to mention it to me, but that I was invited- because I'm very inconsiderately not on Facebook, I didn't get automatically invited with the others. Maybe I should sign up- it's not the first time it's made things more complicated for people- but I somehow have a subconscious negative reaction to it. Anyway, that's a digression. I was pleased to be invited, because as I say, even though we don't necessarily get on well from a purely conversational point of view, I do like her, and it's a nice gesture to be asked to do something non-People and Planet, something personal. I was also touched that the Residences Officer asked me to her birthday party last week- I would really have liked to go, but sadly couldn't because it was the Thursday night that I spent working on the project with my group members before the deadline (eventually ending up staying the night in the library). But I should be able to go to the President's party. I was going to go to a film being shown by French Connection (the French society), but it looks like I won't even have to miss that- the party starts at 8, but there's no need to be there right from the start and she said it'll probably get going a bit later, and the film starts at 6. I won't be able to go to the Postgraduate Christmas Party, but I was only half inclined to anyway. I think this sounds more fun!

I probably shouldn't have stayed out so late or drunk quite so many cocktails (though I didn't really feel that affected)- we all have to be there for 9.30 tomorrow, so we can all provide an audience for other groups' presentations (and the order has not yet been decided to encourage this). When I say we have to be there, the lecturer actually said, and he wasn't joking, that if we're not there at 9.30 we fail this course (as in just this module or unit or whatever you want to call it, Computational Statistics, that is, not MSc Statistics. I think). Given that I haven't been the best at getting out of bed in time to turn up to all the appropriate things over the past few weeks I think I should have tried not to handicap myself. On the other hand, the cocktails were very tempting... I think I'm going to rely on the adrenaline.

When I got back to halls, I noticed some posters on the doors about Thursday's consultation meeting with a man from LSE who's pretty important, whose name I know well but whose job description escapes me for the moment. It's something that happens in each halls, but what interested me at this particular point was that it was on the door. In my conversation with the Deputy Manager this morning (not that it seemed like this morning), she had said that we weren't allowed to put posters on doors any more as it was Shaftesbury Student Housing policy (She was nice about it- it's them I'm annoyed with). I thought maybe the poster of the poster just hadn't heard. Then I bumped into him putting one up on the door to my block- it was the LSE Student Representative. We had a discussion about that and the more general issue of Shaftesbury's running of the halls- I asked him about whether he'd got permission to put posters on the doors and what I'd been told, and he said that as they'd said they were going to get some more noticeboards he felt entitled to carry on putting them on doors till those arrived. I think it's a shame not to be able to have posters- even non-management approved ones that people have just stuck up to advertise LSE Mexican Society parties or whatever. It provides a bit of communal atmosphere in what is, due to the way it's been designed into separate shut off flats, a rather sterile hall. Especially as we can't put stuff on the walls, even in our own rooms (unheard of for a hall of residence, at least in my experience). More importantly, from a Sustainability Champion point of view, people see posters on doors. They don't look on noticeboards, at least not often, and not without standing around chatting or waiting in the general area, or without having something specific they're looking for. And they won't be looking as they get their bags down before heading off home, which is when they really need reminding about switching stuff off, as good intentions are the simple bit, it's so easy to forget. True, a poster on the door fades into the background after a while, but I think they would still have registered it enough for it to make a difference. The management seems to be generally only too keen to embrace environmental measures- and this would save money on electricity bills too- but yet they have a policy like this. To be fair, I suppose it's probably from higher up than the environmentally keen manager of this particular hall that I've spoken to, though.